23,000 To Lindsey Graham: No Foul to Use A-Word on Israel-Palestine

There's good news and bad news on the Israeli-Palestinian justice front today.

The bad news is that neither 5 Broken Cameras, the Palestinian-Israeli documentary about nonviolent protests against Israeli land confiscation and daily life in the Palestinian village of Bilin in the West Bank, nor The Gatekeepers, the Israeli documentary in which former heads of Israel's domestic intelligence service reflect on their experiences and slam Israeli governments for not making peace with the Palestinians, won an Academy Award.

The good news is that they were both nominated; many Americans learned of them for the first time, and many more Americans will now get to see them. (5 Broken Cameras is on Netflix.)

And the other good news: by the end of this week, Chuck Hagel is going to be confirmed as our next Secretary of Defense, despite being attacked by Senator Lindsey Graham for having once allegedly used the A-word in talking about the dystopian future of Israel-Palestine if Israel doesn't make peace with the Palestinians. This is a great victory for humanity, because if Chuck Hagel can allegedly speak plainly about the dystopian future of Israel-Palestine if there is no peace, then every American can do it. If such observations would become commonplace in the United States, then peace between Israel and Palestine would become much more likely.

Of course, if you're in the in-crowd, then you know that many top former Israeli officials have used the A-word in talking about the dystopian future of Israel-Palestine if there is no peace agreement. But this is exactly why, by becoming our first Secretary of Defense to have allegedly used the A-word in talking about Israel's future, Chuck Hagel will have done the Israeli people a great service. If folks in Washington allowed themselves to make the same criticisms of the Israeli government's failure to make peace as Israeli politicians have routinely made, we could start to have a serious conversation about U.S. policy. Whether he meant to or not, Chuck Hagel has opened a door. We can all walk through it.